Tiff Dressen

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I write to you from fault lines 
                             for Lorine Niedecker 


I write to you 
               from fault lines 

                       2,000 miles 

               away this western 

        edge of the north american 
                                                       plate 


  I grew tall with cattails 

                      wings flashing 
                               red-yellows 

                sometimes January minnows 
                      frozen beneath boots 



     I write to you breathless and 
                               chilled 


                      seventy feet of clarity 
                              ears throbbing 

                                       blue reflecting 

                            back to us	      gift of 

                                    glaciers the feeding 

                                              aquifers 

               to say I "bore the weight of lake water 

   	                        and the cold"

                                       and survived

                                              nothing more


                a friend on shore says

                         "I thought you would swim away

					and never return"



               delicate bivalvia 
                        once living 

                                              now halved
                                                     in my hands 


                        submersion is another kind

                                        of submission 

                               but kinder

Tiff Dressen was born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. Their latest book is Of Mineral (Nightboat Books, 2022). SONGS FROM THE ASTRAL BESTIARY (lyric& Press, 2014) is their first full-length collection of poetry. They currently live in Oakland and work in the Office of Research at UC Berkeley.